


The Dingus

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: AU, Fusion, Gen, Post-Gauda Prime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-11
Updated: 2011-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Gauda Prime, a hard-boiled detective looks for The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dingus

1  
"The key--" the man said, as he fell flat on his face on the threadbare carpet in my office. He didn't say anything else, and when I prodded him with the toe of my boot, he didn't move. When I turned him over, there was a thread of blood at the side of his mouth, and his eyes were popped wide-open, staring at horrors. He didn't fog up either my clipgun or the mirror in my compact, so I filed him under DOA.

I did a quick check in the mirror: I still looked rather pleasantly like a blonde Satan.

This wasn't the first stiff to turn up in my office. I did a quick inventory: did I kill him? Was I getting paid to keep him alive? The answers were No and No, so after pocketing the key and checking to see that my secretary's commendable lack of curiosity was as pronounced as ever, I called the cops.

Goddamn. It was Lieutenant Glaivantt. Even though I wasn't guilty of anything except loathing the big dumb shit, I knew I looked suspicious.

Flashbulbs popped, and Glaivantt performed the same sophisticated forensic testing I had already done, minus one step. As far as I know, he doesn't carry a compact. "Okay, boys, bag 'im," he said, and my extremely short-term visitor disappeared into a zippered sack.

"Don't get your palls in an uproar," I said.

"Hey, if it ain't the Princess of the Brass Bra Brigade," he said.

No love lost either way. I mean, if Glaivantt was the French Army, the first nine privates might actually enjoy basic training. But he's got a real problem with Private Dix.

2  
I heard that a sloe gin fizz is the best thing for cramps. Only works in the short run though--the next day, you still have cramps and a hangover too. At least if you have seven of them.

So, when I dragged through the door and looked in my desk drawer, I wasn't all that pleased to find out that the pint bottle of rye was empty. My secretary has little enough work to do, and replacing the hooch is an important part of it. At least clearing out the dead soldiers, for Christ's sake. So I went into the outer office.

"Hair of the dog, Vila," I demanded.

"Sure, boss," he said, digging into his desk drawer. "Just adrenaline and soma though, we're flat out of that rye stuff you like." He passed over the flask and fussed around a little. "You feeling okay, Soolin?"

After a swig, my view turned from jaundiced to near-primrose. "Sure. I can't have a hangover that lasts until menopause. You're a good sister, man," I told him. Vila and I go back a long way--oh, only a few years, but eventful ones.

3  
A chubby guy with a geriatric gunsel fronting for him. Jesus, standards sure have gone to hell.

I tossed Pindar's gun into Egrorian's lap. "The cripped newsie took it away from him," I said. "But I made him give it back. So, what gives?"

"Ten thousand credits for you to find something that belongs to me. Which can be found in a place to which, I believe, you have the key. Just go someplace you don't really want to go and fetch it back to me and try not to think too hard in between," Egrorian said, with a repulsive chuckle.

Pindar came into the room, massaging the wrist I'd kicked. "We'll have to keep the pins out of your reach," he twittered. "Are you afraid you'll end up like Oedipus? Go back, poke around, find out something you don't like?"

"I'm not married and my father's dead," I said. "I'll take the risk. Considering what you're paying." Which was more than the job was worth, which made me suspicious (come to think of it, I'm always suspicious of my clients--scum of the Earth and a few hundred other planets, by and large). But it was enough more that I didn't much mind. I didn't believe him, I believed the 10,000 credits.

You have to get paid up front in the detective game. Seems like half the time all you do is trip over your clients' guilty secrets. Just try collecting the balance of your fee after THAT.

4  
Even before I jacked the three-D holoscan for the key into my deskconsole database, I had a sick feeling that I knew what it was going to tell me.

Locker 409. Rented for two more days, then the authorities would break it open and put the contents up for auction.

Locker 409. Gauda Prime Spaceport Terminal R.

Bet your bottom credit that GP is brutally short on sentimental associations for me. I didn't expect ever to see the place again after my parents refused to sell the farm and ended up buying the farm. My follow-up visit was, if anything, less promising.

It was a fucking insult that they didn't rate Vila and me worth more than a wretched few stun charges and a joyride in a dumpster full of corpses. But we were happy enough to be insulted.

How'd we get off Gauda Prime and the long way around to Derry- D-A? Well, a girl always has something to sell. The conventionality of the solution depressed me even more than the work, but I copped a break during a stint with a rich guy who had a lot of enemies, so he liked having a mistress who could shoot straight. Eventually all I had to do with bodies was guard them. I put in a stint as a Galactic op, then got my PI license.

5  
"So what are we looking for?" Vila asked, which was surprisingly reasonable for him, but also frustrating because the only answer I had was "whatever this key opens up."

"Well, that's Hyper-Post-Modernism for you, innit?" Vila said, satisfied as if he were out chewing his cud in the bright sunshine. "Who's got the dingus, and who's looking for it? And who's looking at it?"

6  
"The locker key is only part of the solution," he said. "Another key..." he said, and took a perspex prism out of his pocket. "I rather think that you can help me find Orac. And that would be worth something to me, you know."

"I've got a client. You're not him."

"Such matters can be adjusted, can't they, Soolin?"

"Don't be so sure that I'm as crooked as I look." That kind of reputation can be good for business, bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. Aw, hell, where do you think I learned that from?

The years hadn't been too bad to Avon. He looked quietly rich, as though with a little bit of downtime he finally got to scour the galaxy and find all that money he socked away all that time ago. The lines in his face were etched deeper, but the Big Artist had used dental tools, not a trowel. There was further to go before his raised eyebrows hit his hairline.

Too bad that some of the ring of steel had drained out of that voice, leaving nothing but the suede and Sono-Vapor. But he was still good. It was the look in his eyes, chiefly, and that little purr when he said, "You can help me, Soolin."

Before I knew it, I had my hands all over him, I couldn't stop, as if the cure for everything that went wrong in my life could be dragged out of that now fined-down body with my teeth and my nails.

Why didn't we before? Mostly we were busy passing Tarrant hand-to-hand. Anyway, by the time it stopped bothering me how much he was like Dorian, he was more like Dorian than ever.

"A stuff that dreams are made of," Avon said, still needing to see or manufacture irony everywhere. But it was pretty special, anyway. He was so glad to show off the fancy new tricks he had picked up in the last few years, over and above the ones he already knew.

7  
Some fucking investigator, hmmm? I never held myself out as any great genius sleuth. Half the time--well, half of half the time I'm not just sitting in my office looking at my name painted backwards on the glass--I'm just muscle for hire anyway.

Maybe it was traumatic amnesia, and it took me this long to remember. Or maybe I just didn't want to know, what happened at GP. But I put the pieces together this time, all right.

When a rebel leader is killed, a rebel--no matter how temporary and reluctant--is supposed to do something about it. Otherwise, it's bad for your organization. Bad for rebellion everywhere.

I could have let it slide, but I knew I'd regret it. Maybe not right away, but soon, and for the rest of my life. Which would be about a week. It doesn't matter who loves who. I play the sap for nobody. And I'm sure Avon would say the same.

So I called Glaivantt. Avon killed Blake, and he was going over for it. He was in my arms when the doorbell rang. Last I saw of Avon, he and the Loot were in a glass-sided elevator, handcuffed together. And he was smiling.

I hope they don't hang him by that sweet neck. Given Avon's talent for landing on his feet, they probably won't. If they let him out--I'll be waiting.

I'll have a few rotten nights, but they'll pass.

**Author's Note:**

> The Maltese Falcon, of course.


End file.
